DISCOVERY ART LEAGUE Learning and Practicing Art in East County

by Sue Clanton

The Discovery Bay Art League quickly became the Discovery Art League because soon after the group began the scope of our membership and interests almost immediately leaped past the boundaries of our Discovery Bay community.

Discovering, Learning, Growing, Serving
As the name implies, the main focus of the Discovery Art League is to enable people to discover art through education, appreciation, and participation. In other words, we want to encourage people to learn about art, to enjoy it, and to do it.

To help people learn, the League conducts an ongoing Friday afternoon watercolor class. In addition, we sponsor workshops featuring nationally known artists. We also sponsor trips, often locally to sites around the Bay Area and sometimes abroad. A few years ago we went to China. This year we are planning a September trip to Tibet.

Our trips are being lead by a noted artist, Lian Zhen, who taught watercolor outdoor sketching for eight years at Berkeley, and is author of a number of books about creating art. Zhen offers watercolor and Chinese painting workshops throughout the US and in Europe, Canada, and Mexico.

We "discover" a lot of things on these trips besides art. In Tibet we will be sketching and painting, of course, but we will especially be having major fun together.

This year Discover Art League is starting an annual scholarship for a local high school graduate who is majoring in art. To raise money Keller Williams Reality is going to host a Wine & Art Show featuring Discover Art League members. For more information on donating to or applying for Discover Art League's art scholarship contact me at suesjohn@earthlink.net.

Discovering Art Together
I've been with the Discovery Art League since it started, in 1997. The League began as a group of ladies who wished to develop art appreciation. Since then the group has developed into a real art league, by which I mean an organized nonprofit organization focusing on learning, educating, and displaying art.

Vision of rustic beauty

We currently have fifty members and hold meetings on the fourth Monday of every month at Edna Hill School at 7 p.m.

I really enjoy being involved with the League. I enjoy doing artwork, myself, and find that If I'm not involved with other artists I don't work as much; I am stimulated by being with other creative people.

During our monthly meetings we are often experimenting with new media, including glass, photography, and fabric. We are always investigating various kinds of artwork. In one recent meeting, for example, we learned the essentials of making jewelry using silver clay. Often an artist will demonstrate techniques or talk about a book. We usually look at new products and examine art pieces developed using various media.

All the people attending the meetings seem to be artistically capable and some even are gifted. So when we are introduced to a new media, it is always great to see what everyone ends up doing with it during the course of the evening. The results are always surprising; often amazing!

The Discovery Art League also works with a number of local businesses, displaying our works in banks, stores, and shops. At Perez Nursery we display our artwork at the garden show. We will be doing that again this year, May 2, from 11 am to 4:30 PM.

Discovering Art Abroad
Discovery Art League extends its scope around the world through the travels of members and the subsequent formal and informal reports back to the organization. We often practice the art we discover together in remote locations.

Taking flight

Much of my artwork is connected with travel. My husband is retired so we have time to take off for whatever distant destinations may beckon us. I take portraits of people in other places, as well as painting landscapes and still life pictures. The art of photography is never more interesting, in my opinion, than when dancing and dancers are the subjects being photographed.

The most exciting thing I ever did in my life was attend a dance festival a few years ago in New Caledonia, a picturesque island in the South Pacific, and taking pictures of the dancers. The experience was amazing! The people were dressed in their native costumes, performing their folk dances with wonderful energy and abandon. This once every four years festival is the South Sea Island dancers equivalent of the Olympics.

I think it's wonderful watching people dance. The rhythms, emotions, body language speak to my spirit. Dancing reveals things about a culture that otherwise remain hidden. At the Pacific Arts Festival, for example, they perform a dance about planting a taro root. Other dances are about fertility or coming of age.

A new creation in process

The Pacific Arts Festival is coming around this year in Palau. This year it will involve 2,000 people from 27 nations. Besides dancing, the festival features weaving, stone carving, tapa making, healing, canoe building, and tattooing.

When traveling, I enjoy taking candid shots of people, shooting pictures of them when they don't know I'm taking them. This is easy to do at venues such as kids' dance festivals or Native American powwows, etc. Last year I got some great shots at the big powwow that takes place in Las Vegas.

I hope that the club membership grows so we have more people to draw from and more people to interact with. We will have more shows, draw more people, sell more artwork....

Especially, we will have even more fun!

Parade	Painted Dancer